Service Projects!

Service projects have been one of my favorite activities that the Institute has the student body doing every week. The school has multiple places around the Nashville area where we volunteer to serve in many different ways. Global Outreach Developments Intl. put service projects as a big part of the SLAM mission trips, so the summer interns from the Institute are helping facilitate the service projects with the church groups attending SLAM.
Today for service projects I was paired with another intern named Esther. Her and I were assigned to Chippington 2 towers which is a high rise apartment building that serves some of Nashville’s most vulnerable older adults. These residents live alone and face physical limitations that prevent them from maintaining their homes, so part of serving them is light house cleaning, but also creating long lasting memorable conversations for these residents. When we were there this morning we met up with some of the Academy for God’s junior high students. We went into a few residents homes to do some light house cleaning and encouraged the students to interact with the residents we were serving. These junior high students did an incredible job with not only the cleaning, but also making conversation and bringing God’s Word into the conversations they were having which was so encouraging to see.
After cleaning a few of the residents homes we were transferred to another service project site where we went to a church that has a huge garden where 100% of the produce is given to people that are in need of food. The farm is grown and owned by someone named Nature Nate who is running his whole farm completely non profit knowing God has provided for him to have this opportunity to serve people. During our time there we all helped Nature Nate with setting up a type of fish tank that grows fish to be donated for food (I forgot what its called). We helped by moving cinder blocks from outside of the green house to the inside along with setting up the tanks in a particular way. This service project was more on the physical labor side of service projects but it was something I really enjoyed doing. Even though it was hot outside and everyone was sweaty, we were able to help teach the kids how farms work and how to set things like that up while keeping a good attitude and having a good time through it all. Today was very encouraging seeing how passionate these junior high students are to be serving God and wanting to help in every way they can.
I can see myself enjoying tasks and service projects like this all summer. Seeing the whole project come to life, piece by piece, was so encouraging and I cannot wait to continue serving in ways like this this summer and any chances I can get in the future.